


To Hat a Head

by kynikos



Category: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (Movies - Burton)
Genre: About Alice and the Hatter, Fluff, Gen, Hats, Hatting, Just a short (hopefully cute) fic, Nothing much happens, One Shot, Tea, and a hat, elevenses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25514965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kynikos/pseuds/kynikos
Summary: A quick 'just another day' where Alice takes tea and asks for a hat.
Relationships: Tarrant Hightopp & Alice Kingsleigh
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	To Hat a Head

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the sole reason that I love the books and movies (although to be fair they are very different) and I'm mad that the Hatter never really got to make Alice a hat.

‘It’s Alice!’ says the Hatter, and ‘It’s Alice!’ says the Hare. The Dormouse sleeps, as he tends to do, but the Hare tips him out of his teacup – along with a splash of tea – and he splutters awake.

‘It’s Alice,’ the Hatter says, helpfully.

‘Oh!’ says the Dormouse. His eyelids droop. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Eight past,’ the Hatter says, inspecting his watch.

‘Eight past _what_?’ the Hare asks, suddenly interested.

‘Guess.’

‘Hello,’ Alice says, and sits, pouring herself a cup of tea when it becomes clear that no one else is going to. She adds milk and cream, takes a sip, and tips in a cube of sugar.

‘Four.’

‘No.’

‘Five.’

‘No.’

‘Six.’

‘Yes!’ the Hatter roars, and tosses a scone into the air. The Hare spears it on the end of a butterknife as it falls, and forces it – with some difficulty; the Hatter bakes very large scones – into his mouth.

‘Hello, Alice,’ says the Hatter. The March Hare struggles to speak, but all that comes out is crumbs. ‘It’s wonderful to see you. You look very green and yellow and pink and white.’

‘I’m wearing blue,’ Alice points out.

‘You look very _spring_ ,’ the Hatter says, and passes her an empty plate. She takes it reflexively, and hesitates. ‘What is this?’

‘Cake.’

‘There’s nothing on the plate, Hatter.’

‘The cake’s on the other side of you.’ It is indeed, a great cream-covered sponge cake, and she cuts herself a slice.

‘You’ve never took tea with us ever,’ the Hatter says. ‘Taken, I mean. Before. Is it an occasion?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Guess!’ the Hare shouts, the scone finally swallowed. ‘Guess, guess.’

‘You're having a baby,’ the Hatter says. ‘It’s your grandmother’s funeral. The queen has become a king.’

‘No,’ Alice says. ‘Nothing so strange.’

‘Nothing at all strange about having a baby,’ the Dormouse says, completely asleep but surprisingly lucid. ‘People do it all the time. I’ve done it hundreds of times.’

Alice blinks. ‘…Guess again.’

‘Birthday, wedding, new year’s, Christmas, spring, summer, winter, christening, burying, Tuesday,’ the Hatter says as if reciting. ‘Saint’s day, devil’s day, someone’s found a bone, you’ve met a pretty woman and you’ll never be alone. Or have you painted your house a different color?’ He gestures to his own, strange and lopsided house, behind them. ‘I have tea whenever I do that.’

‘I’ve come for a hat.’

He stares for just a moment as her words sink in, and then he springs out of his chair and onto the table, dishes and cutlery scattering. ‘A _hat_!’

‘We’ve been friends for so long, and I thought…’

‘A _hat_!’

‘Yes.’

‘A _hat_!’

‘Tarrant?’

He flings himself full length across the table towards her, dishes flying left and right. He slides to a stop just in front of her teacup, cream and hot water all up his front. ‘My dear, you shall be provided with the most superb, resplendent, delectable headpiece in all the long history of Wonderland.’

‘Perhaps not too flashy, though. Something wearable.’

‘Flashy? I don’t even know what that word means. My hats are never flashy.’

She smiles. ‘Wonderful.’

‘Let’s make you a hat, Alice.’

* * *

His hands flutter almost like birds, Alice thinks, flashing across ribbon and felt and string and buttons, creating and tearing apart as his mind darts around and around, considering and discarding every design imaginable. She watches, mesmerized, and in the span of only a few moments he has thrown together a wild mauve-and-pink creation with a floppy brim and a trio of flowers nodding over the crown. He snorts at it and flings it into a corner of the room.

‘Where will you wear it?’ he asks, hands still moving.

‘Out.’

‘Will you slay mad beasts? Or hunt for hidden treasure?’ He forms a mesh of wire and folded crepe across it, forming a sort of angular pith helmet. He twirls it on his finger.

‘No! Just a normal hat for everyday.’

‘A hat for dreaming, then.’ He tears the hat in half and weaves the pieces together with multicolored yarn, creating a veil-like, foreign-looking thing that shimmers in the dim light of his workroom. ‘To let the warm dreams in and keep the cold ones out. Dream stallions come and away me bear, far from the shadows of the dark nightmare…’ He places the hat on her head and she squints through the swaying string.

‘No, Hatter.’

‘Right.’ He throws it into a corner. ‘An everyday hat.’ His hands still as he stares at her. ‘Color?’

‘Blue?’

‘A timid, questioning blue, that only comes out when you ask nicely.’ And he is at it again, rolling and twisting pieces of felt into a sort of figure-eight of white and blue. When he is done, the model lies on the table, a modest, floppy hat that Alice can see would droop down on both sides when it had been put on.

‘It’s lovely,’ she says, and she means it, but the Hatter scoffs and waves his hands.

‘It’s alright for a model, I suppose,’ he says. ‘But a hat for an Alice will take more care than that. So if you like it, go on and finish taking tea. I’ll make it while you wait.’

She stands from the ottoman and makes her way to the door, stepping gingerly over piles of fabric. ‘Thank you, Hatter,’ she says.

He smiles.

* * *

The Hatter loses track of time, as he often does. Time hates him, of course. So it comes as a surprise to him when Alice comes back in – softly and carefully – to ask about the hat.

‘If it’s not done, I can come back later,’ she suggests.

‘It’s not been long,’ the Hatter protests. ‘Patience is a virtue, virtue is a grace.’

She glances pointedly out of the window. It is already quite dark. ‘The scones were lovely,’ she adds.

‘Oh, dear,’ the Hatter says, standing and pulling several watches out of several pockets. All of them read the same time, which is Too Late. ‘Oh dear oh dear. I’ve taken too long, haven’t I.’ He looks down at the table, where the hat is only about half-finished. ‘I am sorry.’

‘It’s alright, Hatter,’ Alice says, uncomfortable at his obvious worry. ‘Really, I don’t mind at all. I’ll just find somewhere to wait the night.’

‘My mother’s room, of course,’ the Hatter says. ‘Just up the stairs. And I will finish the hat before morning.’ He sits again and goes back to work, completely ignoring her and her half-hearted polite objections. She really is rather tired, so she goes willingly up the stairs and finds his mother’s room, and sleeps the night in Wonderland for – is it the first time? She cannot remember having slept, and certainly not in a bed.

* * *

Dreams were different there.

* * *

She wakes slowly to the shaking and poking of the Hatter. ‘Alice!’ he whispers. ‘Alice, Alice, wake up, wake up!’

‘What?’ she asks, rubbing her eyes.

‘Hat!’

‘Is it… morning?’ It certainly doesn’t feel like morning. It feels like the middle of the bloody night.

‘No, no, of course not, I finished the hat before morning like I said I would.’ She sits upright, trying not to yawn too widely.

He waves his arms dramatically. ‘I present you, lady Alice, with your hat.’ And he does.

It is a beautiful hat. Light blue and dark blue and white and black, mixing and fading around the crown and into the brim. She sets it on her head and it fits perfectly, far better than any hat she has ever bought in England. It is soft, but the crown is firm, and the drooping of the brim around her face is comforting rather than constricting (as she had worried it might be). There is a single ribbon, tied round the very top, with a knot at an angle that she can somehow only think of as _sarcastic_ , though that hardly makes much sense.

‘It’s wonderful, Tarrant,’ she says. ‘I love it.’

He smiles, again, and his brilliant red hair stands up with embarrassed pleasure. ‘Thank you, Alice,’ he says.

‘For payment?’

He nods, suddenly serious. ‘Yes. For this hat…’ He raises an eyebrow and rolls his eyes, thinking. ‘For this hat, you must take tea with us again.

‘Alright, Hatter.’

She follows him as he dashes down the stairs. ‘I will bake an Alice cake,’ he calls up. ‘And scones for the Hare. And scones for me. And you. And another cake for the Dormouse to sleep in.’

‘What time is it?’ she calls down, stopping at the top of the stairs.

‘Too Early,’ he answers.

She sighs and turns around. She places the hat carefully and almost reverentially on the dresser, and goes back to bed.

‘A delver delves, and a bellman tolls, so I have heard it said,’ sings the Hatter in the kitchen as he readies the tea. ‘But the job of a Hatter here or there is just to hat a head.’

**Author's Note:**

> Leave kudos and comments, and subscribe (to me, not the fic, obviously)! Survive!


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